Uncomfortable diplomacy

On June 21, 1840, a fleet of 20 British warships carrying 4,000 troops arrived near Macao off the southern coast of China. It hovered around for a few days before sailing away from the coast. Chinese authorities hardly paid attention, with their engagement intensely focused on the ongoing state-wide crackdown against opium that had gained momentum. The relief, however, was short-lived: The fleet had actually sailed further north to Ting Hai. Nine minutes after the British fleet opened fire at Ting Hai, with 15 warships engaged in the broadside in tandem, much of the northern Chinese port was reduced to rubble. The first battle of what came to be known as the First Opium War (1839-1842) was over; less than two months later, the war itself would end with China signing the Treaty of Nanjing and ceding Hong Kong to the British.

While the nomenclature of the war points to the British waging one to free China from the menace of opium, the truth is exactly the opposite: The British empire of the 19th century, including the British East Indian Company, was the world's largest grower and exporter of processed opium, and China was a lucrative market where a free trade of the narcotic would allow the British to shore up their fast-dwindling reserves of silver. Although the strategy succeeded to an extent, the legacy of the First Opium War (and the second, fought about 15 years later) remains an intensely uncomfortable experience for both the British and the Chinese, argues Julia Lovell in her latest book The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China.

Lovell, who teaches Modern Chinese History at the University of London, and is also an award-winning literary translator and author of books such as The Politics of Cultural Capital: China's Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature and The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 BC-AD 2000, traces in her lucid account "the antagonisms, misunderstandings and distortions that the Opium War has generated over the past hundred and seventy years", and finds that the reality of the conflict is more of a "tragicomedy of overworked emperors, mendacious generals and pragmatic collaborators" than a homogeneous account of victory and defeat.

It is a compelling and exhaustive narrative — with more than 100 pages of annotations, timeline, sketches of principal characters, maps and illustrations — and one that doesn't shy away from critically examining the manipulations deployed by both sides to extract the maximum mileage from history.

"China is a world unto itself — a universe that is fascinatingly different from the British environment in which I grew up. I was drawn to it through a desire to understand a little part of this vast, complicated place," says Lovell, explaining what propelled her towards writing The Opium War. "My interest in the Opium War goes back to my first visit to China in 1997, a few months after the Hand-over of Hong Kong. Perhaps my first cultural experience after I arrived was to watch the historical blockbuster that had been commissioned to coincide with the Hand-over: Xie Jin's The Opium War. It's a dark, brooding tale of scheming British imperialists and patriotic Chinese resistance. The war is filmed as a tragic humiliation — a humiliation expunged only by the Handover — and the film becomes a meditation on China's sufferings and the lessons of history for the present day. This was my first practical experience of China's relationship with history. This is a place where the 19th century, and the Opium War in particular, can seem like yesterday. It made a deep impression on me, and I'd always wanted to return to this episode that's so important to modern China and its relationship with the West."

Writing a book about the Opium War helped Lovell revise preconceptions she had harboured about China. More importantly, it helped debunk several myths on Sino-Western engagement with evidence that is empirical and anecdotal: the fumbling entreaties from British traders on expanding the honourable trade of opium; Lovell's encounter with the Angry Chinese Youth; a PowerPoint slideshow in Beijing University on the evils of British aggression, etc.

In a recent policy document, the Chinese government said the country wants to be a rich, strong nation at peace with other countries and will not repeat the mistakes of other great powers who have sought hegemony. The obvious reference to colonial powers aside, in a world where China is increasingly eyeing the superpower club but remains ill at ease in its relationship with the West, The Opium War is mandatory reading to understand the true subtext of that relationship.

Weekend Review asked Lovell what her plans were after three exhaustive non-fiction books on China. "I'm very passionate about keeping up my work on Chinese literature and translation, alongside my historical research," she said. "My next project, though, will be a global history of Maoism: How Maoism has travelled beyond China to become an international political force. I'll start by looking at Maoism as radical chic in 1960s' Europe, then move on to its violent impact on countries such as Peru, Nepal and India."

The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of ChinaBy Julia Lovell, Picador, 480 pages, £25